Blog Tour and Giveaway: Tempest by Lisa Henry and J.A. Rock

From Lisa and J.A.: Thanks for following our tour! To celebrate our release, we’re giving away an awesome prize – an ebook copy of a novel of your choice from either of our back catalogs. We’re also giving away a $20 Riptide gift voucher, and some comfy items picked especially for you by Henry: a pillow shaped like a donut, and a pair of donut-themed socks.

All you have to do is leave a comment on this post with a way for us to contact you, be it your email, your twitter, or a link to your facebook or goodreads account. Please put your email in the body of the comment, not just in email section of the comment form, because we won’t be able to see it otherwise! On March 20, 2015, we’ll draw a winner from all eligible comments! Be sure to follow the whole tour, because the more comments you leave, the more chances you have to win the prize!

Blurb:Something wicked this way comes.

FBI Agent Ryan “Mac” McGuinness and con man Henry Page are on the run again. This time they’re headed back to where it all began: Altona, Indiana. Population: some goats. Henry’s not happy about lying low at the McGuinness family farm, but they’ve got nowhere else to go.

While Mac fights to clear his name and Henry struggles with whose side he’s really on, a ghost from the past threatens to destroy everything. And those aren’t the only storms on the radar. Cut off from both sides of the law, Mac and Henry must rely on their tenuous partnership to survive.

If Henry can convince himself to let Mac see the man behind the disguises, they’ll stand a chance of beating the forces that conspire against them. The course of true love never did run smooth, but for the two of them, it might be their only hope.

Excerpt: The drive back to Altona was nerve-racking. It wasn’t the police cruisers Mac was worried about—not that he even saw any of those on the busy stretch of the I-69 between Indianapolis and Fort Wayne—it was the black or gray or dark-blue sedans that screamed FBI when they were framed in the rearview, but then turned out to be full of bored businessmen, or moms with kids, or, once, a bunch of teenage girls. Mac really only noticed them because the one in the front seat was changing into her cheerleading outfit as they barreled down the highway, her ass pressed up against the window.

Not that a bunch of cheerleaders was exactly likely to flip his party switch. Where was a carload of college lacrosse players when he needed one?

Nowhere. That’s fucking where.

He rattled along the highway in his dad’s beaten-up old truck and tried not to think about how Henry Page had ruined him for college lacrosse players. Sometimes he felt like one of those rugged, taciturn heroes from a 1940s’ movie, who was stuck with some talkative, troublesome broad with a wit as sharp as the cut of her jacket. Driven to distraction by the sway of her hips and the curl of her smile and the way she just didn’t listen. Then, right in the final scene of the movie, the hero would grab her by the wrist and crush her to his powerful chest. “You are the most irritating, annoying, confounded woman!” the hero would begin, and then he’d kiss her almost violently until she shut the hell up.

That was Henry. Driving Mac way past distraction and straight to the kissing part.

He tapped the steering wheel as he drove.

He really didn’t need Henry, not on top of everything else. Yet he couldn’t imagine being without him, for all his fucking craziness. He’d never understood the whole bad-boy thing before. Was Henry even a bad boy? He was a criminal, but hardly gave off the dark, brooding, and dangerous vibe. Mac didn’t even think he owned a leather jacket.

Or no, maybe it was sugar. Henry had told him that, so it was probably bullshit. Still, it had a ring of truth to it, so what did it matter?

And that was Henry too. Mac liked his world in black and white, but there was Henry, bringing in the gray areas. Bringing in other colors too. Lighting up his world with a laugh or a smile.

Jesus fuck.

Lighting up his world with a smile?

He shook his head to try to clear it as he turned off the highway toward Altona.

He had it real bad.

He stopped at a supermarket in Altona to get a prepaid phone and a candy bar—fuck it, he was on the run. He needed the extra calories. Or some other completely senseless justification.

The clouds were coming in again, low and dark, and the first drops of rain hit as he turned onto Holloway Road. He watched as one slithered into a fine crack in the windshield. A few others splattered the glass. He flicked on the wipers and smeared dust across the windshield.

It was pouring as he turned onto the gravel driveway of his parents’ farm. He wondered if Henry and Vi were over at the old house. He’d go and see his folks first anyway, let them know he was okay and return the truck.

He pulled up outside the house, then strode through the rain to the front door.

“I’m home!”

His mom came out of the kitchen, a relieved smile on her face. “I’m glad you’re back! Everyone was getting worried.”

He looked around. “So where are they all?”

“Well, your father went out to the shed to work on the tractor. You know how he gets when he’s anxious.”

He knew. His dad’s approach to dealing with a problem, however abstract, was to take a piece of machinery apart and put it back together again.

“Cory and Vi went to play pirates and princesses in the basement—” She raised her hands at the expression on his face. “Ryan, she’s a little girl. She’s allowed to be a pirate if she wants. And I think Henry fell asleep waiting for you in your room.”

“My room?”

“Mmm.”

He glanced at the stairs.

“You’re not in high school anymore, honey,” his mom said. “You can close the door if you have a boy in your room.”

Lisa lives in tropical North Queensland, Australia. She doesn’t know why, because she hates the heat, but she suspects she’s too lazy to move. She spends half her time slaving away as a government minion, and the other half plotting her escape.

She attended university at sixteen, not because she was a child prodigy or anything, but because of a mix-up between international school systems early in life. She studied History and English, neither of them very thoroughly.

She shares her house a log-suffering partner, too many cats, a dog, a green tree frog that swims in the toilet, and as many possums as can break in every night. This is not how she imagined life as a grown-up.

J.A. Rock:
J.A. Rock has worked as a dog groomer, knife seller, haunted house zombie, standardized patient, cashier, census taker, state fair quilt hanger, and, for one less-than-magical evening, a server—and would much rather be writing about those jobs than doing them. A lover of m/m BDSM romance, J.A. lives mostly in West Virginia, and always with a beloved dog, Professor Anne.